Making a plan in my sketchbook for the final project informed my process and was really handy as I could jot everything down and make lists of everything I needed to plan the shot.
Setting up the studio, I used a soft box on a boom arm to provide the front facing light on Katy's face. I needed a soft lighting and only one light to create a low key setting. I wanted the images to be focused on the expression of the model and I felt this lighting would help me to do this.
I wanted a black background and Katy to wear a black plain T-shirt.
When it came to the expressions, Katy was a natural. I directed her by asking her to smile naturally and show the facial expression she would show on the outside, even if she was having a bad day.
Below are the shots I got unedited.
Below are the shots I got of Katy once I had processed them in black and white. I wanted the shots to be black and white as I was going to be transferring them into a solar etch and black and white works best.
I started by opening all the shots up in Photoshop and duplicating the background layer of one image, the smiling face. I attempted copying and pasting another expression into the new background layer to see what that would look like. I turned down the opacity of the layer. I didn't quite like this due the composition not being quite right.
I attempted a few things at first, playing around with how I wanted to manipulate the faces.
I made a new canvas that was big enough to fit two images on and tried splitting the faces in half and using warp tool to try and line them up. I wasn't happy with this though. The mouth didn't quite look right.
I tried masking two expressions into the happy one. One on either side. However this didn't quite look how I wanted it either.
I also wasn't happy with the expressions.
Eventually I used the clone tool, and cloned in the expressions I was most happy with, either side of Katy's smiling face. This showed what she was feeling on the inside, and her middle face was what she shown to the world.
The above image was a little two natural tones in the black and white, it needed more contrast so I applied another brightness and contrast adjustment layer and turned up the contrast.
The below image was my final images and I'm really pleased with it as it relates to my mental health theme of the masks we wear.
What worked well:
- That it relates to my theme of mental health; what you see on the outside isn't always whats going on in the inside.
- That this also relates to the brief of 'inside outside'.
- It does this by showing varying emotions, happy - outside, screaming, scared or angry - inside.
- The contrast worked really well for a solar etch.
Event better if:
- I did more peoples faces
- Varying emotions of the same person.
- Trying different angles with the face; profile, off to the light, looking up.
- Doing it in colour and using it as a photograph instead.
- Adding effects to the image to add texture; emboss, weave etc.
The next stage of my final outcome process will be to print off the image as A4, photocopy it onto acetate and make a solar etching plate out of it ready to be inked and put through the press. I'm looking forward to seeing what one of my own photographs will look like as a solar etch.
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